13 - Earthshock

Composer: Malcolm Clarke
Director: Peter Grimwade

What's the score?
A decade after he last worked on DW, Malcolm Clarke returns to the show. His previous score, for 1972's The Sea Devils, was a wild experiment in sonic textures; his score for Earthshock retains some of that textural playfulness, with echoing sepulchral tones during scenes in the caves, cold electronic washes in the space freighter, and an assortment of mechanical system noises depicted in the incidental music. The Cybermen themselves are represented throughout by exaggerated footfalls, particularly when marching, and by the sound of metal girders being struck.
Rather than express himself at length, Clarke peppers the soundtrack with short cues - a common approach the previous year, an oddity in 1982, but very much a trademark of stories directed by Peter Grimwade. The average cue count per episode is nearly double that of any other story in this season.

Musical notes

• The Adric theme composed by Paddy Kingsland makes a couple of reappearances during this story. It first pops up in Part One as Adric talks about going home, in more or less its original form. A sadder version debuts in the middle of Part Four when the Doctor and Adric part company, and plays again at the end as a little requiem.
• In a change from our regular "oo-wee-oo", Clarke uses a more substantial quote from the theme tune in his score. It's first heard in Part One when the troopers spot the Doctor's alien pulse on their scanner. A different version plays in Part Two when the Cyberleader recognises the image of the TARDIS. (There's also a quick "oo-wee-oo" later in Part Two as the Doctor explores the freighter's cargo hold.) There's a partial quote in Part Four when the freighter travels back in time to collide with prehistoric Earth, which seems to serve much the same function as the theme quote at the end of The Visitation, as a wry acknowledgement of the Doctor's part in historical events.
• Over the discussion of dinosaur bones in Part One, Clarke plays a cheeky quote from the "Fossils" section of Saint-Saëns' "Carnival of the Animals". It's echoed a moment later when we see Adric watching the others talk about fossils on the TARDIS scanner - between this and the theme tune quotes in Parts One and Two, there's a bit of a motif in this story of us watching characters watching the Doctor on a screen, which Clarke seems to have picked up on.
• The star of the score is the Cybermen's marching theme. It features prominently in Parts Three and Four, building on elements laid out over earlier scenes of the Cyberleader in Parts One and Two. It's prefigured in scenes of the androids in Part One - the descending three-note phrase can be clearly heard in the cue that plays between Adric's scene in the TARDIS and the rockfall in the caves.
• The end credits of Part Four roll in silence, to mark the death of a major character. Producer John Nathan-Turner famously borrowed this gimmick from Coronation Street, which had sent off a popular character with silent credits in 1964 and repeated the trick several times since.

Vox pop
In one of the musically least remarkable seasons, Clarke's experimentalism comes as a breath of fresh air - there could hardly be a better time to welcome him back to DW. His use of metallic sounds for the Cybermen is inspired, and this together with his clinical use of sound in the freighter scenes and Dick Mills' heavy breathing sound effects really brings the monsters to life. The whole score is a fine demonstration of how the incidental music can be made to help tell the story. Listened to in isolation, it's unlikely to be to everyone's taste (although certainly to your humble blogger's), but it's a tailor-made fit for Earthshock.

Availability

• The BBC DVD release includes the full isolated score as an audio option.
• Three tracks represented this story on Doctor Who - The Music. "Subterranean Caves" was a collection of cues from Part One (of Scott's troopers entering the caves, a rockfall and the Cybermen's androids following the troopers) joined together by Dick Mills' sound effects. "Requiem" was a short cue from Part One that played after Scott's troopers were killed by androids. "March of the Cybermen" was a five-minute composite of several cues from the end of Part Three and the final cue from Part One.